Latest news and discussion from the R&D community revolutionizing accessible images

Fresh DIAGRAM Center Goals

2012 August 31

by anhb

On August 10, the DIAGRAM community gathered once again–this time virtually–to review the goals that came out of our strategic planning at Asilomar and propose how we’ll meet those goals. First we reiterated our mission of making it easier, faster, and more cost effective to make and use accessible images so that students with print disabilities have timely access to the information they need. In other words, our aim is to:

Make it easier for content producers to create accessible images

Make it easier for consumers to use accessible images via technology

Make it easier for both producers and consumers to discover accessible images and tools

Make it easier for both to interact with content that need not be stored as traditional images in the first place (e.g., mathematical expressions)

We then laid out specific 3-year objectives that would serve our mission. These objectives fell into four key categories: outreach/piloting, tools, standards, and content. Some of these objectives included:

Library of training videos and demos so everyone has easy access to our info

Single book/brochure explaining DIAGRAM concept with 10 sample accessible images that have been comprehensively treated so others have tangible examples of what we’re trying to facilitate

To accomplish all these objectives we’re also embarking on some reorganization, reconfiguring our working groups so that they are more aligned with our 4 categories of work and also bringing on a new community manager (starting soon!) to help us work better together. The new working groups will kick off soon with new co-chairs and a new online collaboration space. Thanks to everyone who has signed up for a group and those who have agreed to chair groups. This next phase of our work together promises to be fruitful and exciting!